Hitler has begun his fateful march across Europe, and the United States and England are locked in denial. It’s 1939, just at the dawn of the intelligence era in U.S. politics. Enter a 22-year-old Jack Kennedy, restless and very ill, who’s preparing to travel through Europe, gathering research for his senior thesis. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, one of a minority of politicians who see the deadly war with Germany looming, enlists the young traveler to keep his eyes and ears open to discover the source of a fund of German money that’s entering the United States – Hitler’s trying to buy the American election, defeat FDR and seat an isolationist in the White House.

Like it so far? That’s just the tip of the iceberg in the wild and riveting Jack 1939, Francine Mathews’ latest work of political fiction. Author Mathews, who’s had spy training and investigative experience as a CIA intelligence analyst, has impressively combined her knowledge of the politics and personalities of that era with a slam-bang plot of espionage and drama.

The author creates a dramatic, unusual picture of young Jack, ill to near death with an as-yet unnamed disease that sends him to the Mayo Clinic and through the care of countless medicos. He’s intelligent, curious, irresistible to women, volatile, with “the fog called boredom or death hovering just over his left shoulder.” Riding on the Kennedy family reputation as pleasure-seeking social climbers, he’s able to close in on the seats of Nazi power without, at first, being counted a threat. Later, fighting for his life in Prague, he remembers with longing that right then, “at home, the first sails were rising in Nantucket Sound.”

Filled with riveting, memorable characters both fictional and historical, Mathews’ book provides an edge-of-the-seat journey, replete with haunting images that readers won’t soon forget. On the one hand, Jack must deal with his own father, Joseph P. Sr., ambassador to England and an ardent isolationist with tunnel vision; on the other, “the Spider,” a Nazi thug intent on making Jack permanently among the missing. Spotting his Nazi nemesis across a hotel dance floor, Jack realizes he’s left behind the world as he knew it – “This was no sock hop in Hyannis.” Mathews gives us a rogue’s gallery of real historical figures, drawn with color and imagination, including the canny Roosevelt, a turtle-backed J. Edgar Hoover and the hard-drinking Winston Churchill, all poised at the brink of devastating war. The author draws on her knowledge and research on the Kennedys for an astonishing take on private scenes she imagines among them.

Aficionados of espionage fiction, history, the Kennedy family, World War II and seat-of-the-pants excitement will devour this book – it’ll make you want to rush back to your history books once again. This is a must-read story that stands out from the pack.

Francine Mathews will talk about and sign her book July 25 from 3 to 4 p.m. at Titcomb’s Bookshop, Route 6A in East Sandwich.

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